Comprehension of expository text: insights gained from think-aloud data.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the kinds of explicit and implicit statements generated by school-age children with and without language impairments during comprehension of expository texts and to determine the relationship of these statements to comprehension performance.


METHODS
Forty 4th-grade children with and without language impairments participated in individual think-aloud sessions (verbalizing thoughts aloud). During the sessions, children were asked to listen to expository passages 1 sentence at a time, make comments after each sentence, and then answer questions and recall the passages. The comments or verbal protocols that children generated during the think-aloud sessions were transcribed and analyzed. The relationship of verbal protocols to comprehension performance was evaluated.


RESULTS
Findings suggested that the ability to paraphrase passages was closely related to measures of expository text comprehension.


CONCLUSIONS
The use of data obtained during think-aloud sessions may be useful to supplement information gained from traditional measures of comprehension for children with and without language impairments.
Laing Gillam
Sandra
S
Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322, USA. sandi.gillam@usu.edu
Fargo
Jamison D
JD
St Clair Robertson
Kelli
K
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D013060:Speech; D013850:Thinking